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It’s easy to walk past this small, unassuming restaurant without a sideways glance. Nestled in among Crown Street’s variety of renowned culinary delights, even some Surry Hills locals haven’t heard of The Nepalese Kitchen before. And that’s their loss.

If our relationship was depicted in latte art, this would be us. (Image: Bad Latte Art)

Here we are once again. You and I.

Seeing you, it’s like going to the dentist – an occasional appointment which you begrudgingly force yourself to attend.

It’s an obligatory ritual in which we go through the same steps as last time: assess the situation, clean with that pointy thing which I don’t really like, clean with the toothpastey thing which is comparatively better, then rinse! My dentist is a lovely, lovely woman – she is caring, intelligent and pragmatic. We make small talk about our lives and her adult children, whom I know.

Except you are not my dentist and my teeth are no cleaner after having seen you. (more…)

“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”– Maya Angelou

Serving suggestion: Best read with “Breathe Me” by Sia playing in the background.

Honesty. Truth. Integrity.

They have been fundamental values to me for many years, ever since I had the consciousness to make that choice for myself. And for a long time I prided myself on my honesty.

It was my dad (Hi, Dad!), in particular, who ingrained and influenced my value of truth and honesty in me as a child. Later, in my teens, my parents emphasised the importance of integrity to me. So, I have them to thank.

Serving suggestion: This post is best read with “Eye of the Needle” by Sia playing in the background.

I should have known it was coming; it had been bubbling away under the surface throughout the day. Just a faint little scratch on my back where even my disproportionately long arms cannot reach.

It hit me as I was standing there surrounded by strangers. It had been a while since its last visit, but here it was again as the bleached white horizon melted into a majestic, luminous blue. What were once trees were now shadowy silhouettes in this twilight puppet show.

Here we all are – standing centimetres away from each other, whilst only paying our palms any regard. We wouldn’t be able to hear what our neighbour said even if they did say anything. Those white cords are so tangled up in everything now.

****

I have been drafting this blog post, on and off, for nine months.

Nine months.

It was nine months ago that this new reality suddenly clarified itself. And when it did, it all became rather petrifying.

It began with the realisation that I am nearing the end of my current life stage. It is all fairly insignificant, but in this moment it feels so daunting. See, up until now there was such a limited range of choices:

You can choose to go to this school or that school. You can choose to be friends with this person or that person, this group or that group. You can choose to break the rules or toe the line. You can choose to go into a trade or stay at school. You can go on a gap year or work or go to university. You can choose to dress how you like. You can choose to study, basically, anything. You can choose to be friends with these people or those people. You can choose where you work part-time. You can choose where you want to live. You can choose to change jobs. You can choose what you consume, literally and metaphorically.

But the next set of choices is bewildering.

You can choose what you want to do with the rest of your life. You can choose which industry you want to work in. You can choose to travel the world without a return ticket. You can choose to think about the future and save up for your first property. You can choose to move to the other side of the world. You can choose, well, anything.

It just feels like these decisions are going to have so many more repercussions, that they are going to be far more instrumental in determining the tone of the rest of my life than all of the decisions I have made prior to today.

****

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Ahh, kindergarten cliches.

I cannot clearly remember what I “wanted to be” as a kid. Although, I have a vague feeling that there was a stage when I wanted to be a marine biologist (mainly because it sounded exotic). Apart from that I can’t seem to remember, which for someone who often has a disturbingly detailed memory, is mildly disconcerting. I can vividly recall posters on our kindergarten walls, but I can’t remember what I wanted to grow up to be.

These days I have a better idea of what I want to be. And by “better idea” I mean “I have an answer to the “So, what are you going to do when you finish uni?” question”.“Marketing,” I reply. That seems to satisfy all parties. And, look, it’s not like I don’t want to work in marketing. I do. I think I do, at least. I mean, it combines many of my skills and interests, plus it is a growing industry where, in relative terms, there are jobs available (the novelty!) I think I can see myself doing well in marketing and enjoying it to a greater or lesser extent.

To a greater or lesser extent.

Unfortunately, I am blessed and cursed with having learnt about the concept of fulfilling work. On the one hand, it is wonderful and inspiring. On the other, I am letting it paralyse me, because now, although I try to rationalise it, that is what I am seeking.

I am going to start working full-time in the near future – something which many of my peers have already been doing for multiple years – and I just want to know that I am making the right decision for me. I feel like I’ve wasted enough of my early twenties farting around as I struggled through uni (and life in general).

I guess I’ve allowed myself to think that my twenties are the only formative time of my life. Yes, I think they are very formative, but I’ve gotten this idea in my head that I have to get through a heck of a lot of stuff in the next seven years. Lord.

****

Where within the marketing industry should I work? Should I work in media or branding or PR or digital? Should I work agency or client side? Are all of the stereotypes about client and agency sides true? (My experience thus far says “yes”.) Will the work that I do actually make a positive contribution to the world? Will I enjoy it? Will it be fulfilling? Or will it govern my life? Will I chase after success and then realise that it doesn’t actually mean that much?

Or should I just take advantage of the fact that I am young and go and pursue my dream of living in Italy? Should I just ship my ass over to Italia and not look back? But what about buying my investment property? And getting started on my career? And doing sensible setting-myself-up-for-life things that I want to do? And what if I don’t ever come home?

That I have the audacity to complain is, in many ways, truly breathtaking.

I am in the privileged, incredibly privileged position where I have choice. My pay, even if it’s seen as a “low” starting salary among my equally junior peers, will still place me amongst the most wealthy in the world. My work may not be as glamorous or interesting as that of others, but I’ll probably work in a safe, reasonably friendly workplace with my own computer, stationery galore, clean(ish) carpets, a swivel chair, bins which are emptied on a regular basis, flushing toilets, a kitchen, running water and air-conditioning. There may not be that many women in the boardroom – yet – but women are, on the whole, respected and treated as equals.

Yet, despite all of this, I look ahead and wonder whether I am going to be in the air-conditioned confines of an office for the rest of my foreseeable future with despair. And I wonder, if I choose to channel my ambitions and energy into this part of my life am I going to get to the end of my life – whether that be months, years or decades away – and be satisfied with how I spent the precious little time that I have on this Earth?

****

The buses, these great mammoths, weave through impossibly tight cracks in the traffic. The doors open and we, with our white cords dangling around our scarf-wrapped necks, silently file in. Will I come to know each of these faces, will I watch them silently age, but never know their names?

There are only remnants of burnt orange along the horizon now and what was a royal blue has been submerged in a midnight ink. Where did the sunshine go? I barely know what the weather was like today. Is this what being an adult is meant to be like?

****

The tear. It’s another one of those idiosyncrasies of the English language: it is both a noun (the water-like result of crying which comes from your eyes), a verb (to rip something) and yet another noun (the result of the ripping).

This is the latter noun; this is my tear: I am unsure which direction to take my life in. I would really just like to be able to do it all. Or at least to do something and know that I was making the right decision for me, knowing that I wasn’t making a terrible mistake and wasting another irretreivable day.

And, ironically, this tear can sometimes result in another noun: the water-like droplets which carve out their path through my makeup.

This bears far too much resemblance to my childhood diary for my liking. Yes, I was a 90s baby. (Image: Justice)

Confessional: I have very rarely been a dedicated diary-writer.

Whenever I did write in my Secret Diary as a kid (which was covered in blue sequin material, thank you very much) I was sure to make my entries original. “Ohmygosh, I like this boy!”, “Ohmygosh, it’s SO unfair!” and “Ohmygosh, she is so mean!” were the ideal complement to my ritual “padlocking” of the said diary so as to ward off the Sibling…who wouldn’t have been interested in reading its contents anyway, now that I come to think of it…

Anyway.

Now, it would be fairly safe to assume that this blog is the adult version of my sequin-spangled, flimsily-padlocked childhood diary, open for the interweb to read, right?

It’s been over ten days since I last wrote – which is, in relative terms, such a long time that I was starting to become mildly concerned. But you see, I was being hyper-aware of not forcing myself to write, particularly after having written this recent piece (skip to the second half). Instead I’ve been waiting until it… just happened.

Trust me, I tried to write over the past ten days. It’s not like nothing has happened. Lots has happened, actually. My drafts have ranged from Eleanor Roosevelt to lying, dating to racism, feminism to vegetarianism, career progression to ethical trade. Naturally. My mind has been teeming, but my fingers have been spilling all over the ivory keys of the piano, rather than onto this, their usual, keyboard.

So, here we are after ten days.

I haven’t actually got any idea where this post is going, by the way. Which is somewhat exciting. Living on the edge.

I’ve noticed a shift over the past few years, but most acutely over the past few months.

In many ways I personified the “goody two-shoes” stereotype as a kid and a teenager. Sure, I was sometimes a mean older sister who was selfish and threw temper tantrums, but on the whole I was a Good Girl. I was the kid who loved nothing more than receiving her teacher’s approval. The kid who didn’t ever receive a detention or bludge school. The 13 year old who actively chose to hang out with the lovely yet “less cool”, conservative girls. The teenager who didn’t go to dances at the local boys’ school – not from a lack of a desire, but due to paralysing fear. The teenager who preferred to go to youth group rather than pursue the older boys, Bicardi Breezer in hand. Trust me, I could go on, but I’m going to spare myself any more cringes.

Looking back, I guess I understood the (power) structures which bound my life and I only ever worked within them. I barely even contemplated rebelling – well, not in any traditional sense of “rebellion”.

And, look, there’s nothing wrong with that; it may not have been a crazy, wild teenage experience, but it was authentic for me at that stage of my life.

There is, however, one huge issue with my younger self: she accepted everything that those in authority told her was the truth.

I lapped it up. I believed everything. I guess I was incredibly trusting and, in relative terms, I had no independent thoughts. My thoughts were always someone else’s.

Is this normal? (NB: Not a rhetorical question. I actually have no idea. Was everyone else like this and I’m just sitting here thinking I’m vaguely unique, but actually we’ve all been through this?)

Either way, I guess it all started changing when I came to the realisation at 19 that, in some ways, I was living a lie.

See, up until that point I had always identified as a Christian – the type that, insensitively told my boyfriend at the time that, actually, he wasn’t a real Christian. God, I was charming. If that former boyfriend is reading this, I’m sorry; I was such a twat.

Anyway. I was a Christian. It was what I had grown up with; it was what I had been told from a very young age was the truth. And look, my parents’ intentions were and are good – of that I have no doubt.

But then I came to realise that I had never actually stopped and thought any of it through; I had always just taken what others had taught me to be the only truth and the only way of seeing the world.

I had never stopped to intellectually, methodically work through the belief system which I was meant to betrying sharing with others for myself. (Scary, I know.) I had never questioned it. I had never questioned anything.

And so began the peeling away of layers – not because I did or do have any issues with those things – including the Christian faith (well, actually I do have some issues with that) – but because I realised that if I’m going to bother to believe in something then I want to do both myself and others the service of taking it seriously. And taking something like a belief system seriously, I would argue, requires thinking it through – thoroughly – and asking questions. Why invest your life in something which you’re not sure, at your core, that you understand or believe in?

I’ve become acutely aware of this again over the past few months. It all began with my psychology lecturer charging us to “question everything”. In many ways, it was just a throw away line in a junior lecture, fruitlessly hoping to resonate with hundreds of first year ears. Sitting in the second last row of the crowded lecture theatre sat this slightly jaded fifth year student. There was no grand initial impact, but something began to simmer under the surface.

A few weeks later I started noticing things – thoughts, to be more precise. Little additions at the end of a paragraph. Little post-it notes at the end of a sentence.

Why?

Really?

How?

Why?

How?

Really?

Is that actually true?

How?

What evidence is there?

Does this actually matter?

Why?

Do you really think so?

But how about…?

Why?

Tell me more.

That which was never part of my nature has suddenly flooded my cerebral cortices (making up for the past two decades, no doubt). What was absent has quickly become inherent. And I love it. I am finally getting to grips with those “critical thinking” and “analysis” things that my various teachers have been talking about for years. I think I am finally thinking about new things in new ways. Whatever it is, it’s surprisingly exciting and exhilarating.

You took your time, Alex. True.

I certainly don’t have the answers, but at least I have begun posing some questions… right?

What is more fictitious, rainbow-coloured unicorns or what I post on social media?

“Comparison is the thief of joy”– Theodore Roosevelt.

Last year I read an article which fundamentally shifted my perspective of my twenty-something life. The article, entitled “Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy”, struck so many chords in me that I still have the tab open in my phone web browser. The article explains the relationship between the discontentment many Gen Ys feel and our use of social media.

Can I highly recommend that you go and read it? I can? Good. If you have not read it please, PLEASE STOP READING THIS and go there RIGHT NOW! Come back to this tomorrow. Just go. Go!! Yes, it is quite long, but yes, it is that good. Have you gone yet? There are unicorns spewing rainbows. Now have I convinced you? Good. Finally.

After having read the Wait But Why* article everything suddenly made so much more sense. The comparative inadequacy I felt, which I had let social media fuel, was able to be rationalised down to a competition where, unbeknownst to me, everyone else is cheating just as much as I am. (For anyone who spews rainbows must be a master of illusions.) I found this clarity and the realisation that no one actually has their sh!t together really quite comforting.

Since having these mini unicorn-illustrated revelations you would think that I would try and do my little bit to stop this really awful, toxic cycle, right? Right. Wrong.

Despite gaining this new perspective I have not demonstrated the maturity or security in myself to stop posting self-promoting status updates, tweets and photos. Posting on social media to (strategically) garner as many likes and follows as possible is Just. So. Addictive.

I’m guilty of it. I still am. It can range from the successful (“I got a full scholarship! I got a new job!”) to the vain (“Oh, did I just accidentally post a selfie? #notthataccidental”) to the envy-eliciting (“Casual check-in at a 5 star restaurant, darlings!”).

I am completely guilty of this. Yet, why do I still do this? Because it feeds my ego.

Is posting really inane, “real” details about our lives the solution? It’s a nice thought, but I don’t think so as that could be:
a) just as attention-seeking as the aforementioned types of posts. I’m sure you’ve encountered them, too – the vague, wallowing, woe-sharing without any explanation (think “Life is the worst!”) which often receive an outpouring of social media sympathy and “care”. (Perhaps that’s part of the issue – maybe we have conditioned ourselves to feel better by sharing our negative experiences on social media. Are we really that disconnected in real life?? If so, then that’s depressing.)
b) bloody boring (Posts of the “I just popped a really big pimple” variety. Too much reality. We do not need that much detail, thanks.)

Who the hell are we kidding? We all know rationally that real life does not have a vintage filter which enhances the colour of our days. Life can be wonderful, but life can be shit. This is nothing new. So, how come we are all buying into this big con, when we probably know that what we see on social media is only a fraction of someone else’s life – and it’s a fabricated fraction at that?

Perhaps the way to counter this isn’t by changing how and what we post, but by weaning ourselves off it altogether. Perhaps it’s time to migrate away from this behemoth that we incessantly feed. Perhaps it’s time to de-friend the fake friend that is social media.

(I mean, how has “de-friend” been allowed to become part of our vernacular?)

****

Personally, I’ve been challenged by my relationship with social media through this blog.

“How?” you inquisitively inquire?

Well, over time it has become apparent that certain types of posts garner more likes, follows and hits than others, which makes it tempting to only write pieces of that ilk. From working in marketing I also know that ensuring that there is new content posted on a regular basis is beneficial for organic search engine optimisation (which we marketing folk call “SEO” – sorry for the jargon) where, basically, you’re aiming to be the first result in a Google search of certain terms which are relevant to your business/website/blog. You can aid your SEO by using key terms relevant to the searches you want to appear in throughout your site and by adding new content on a regular basis.

So, I’ve gotten into the habit of coordinating my posts on certain days of the week not only for SEO, but to correspond with when I know I’ll get the most traffic. An example? I do not post on Saturday night because:
a) most people are engaged in other activities on Saturday night and thus are less likely to see that I have posted something new and
b) it has become Very Important to pretend that you are having an Awesome Time doing something Awesome on Saturday night (even if you’re at home studying or sitting on Facebook when you’re meant to be studying). No one wants to commit social (media) suicide. Duh.

But here’s the thing, I enjoy writing most when it is done out of a creative and emotional impulse. I need to express myself and it needs to happen now! And that means writing about things which are more or less sexy, controversial and happy-go-lucky than that which constitutes a popular post. Recently, I’ve been making myself post a new piece on certain nights each week which I fear is shifting my writing away from “impulse and expression” to “obligation”. The latter of which is the antithesis of what I want for this to be, because doing so would change the nature of this blog entirely.

See, I do not write for you; I write for us.

The “us” is imperative.

This blog would not be what it is if I didn’t write, firstly, for myself. See, if I was only writing to satisfy an external audience then I would find it less meaningful and fulfilling and the end product would reflect my being less emotionally invested in it.

Of course I write knowing that I have an audience and I greatly appreciate your readership, you gorgeous little bandicoots. It fills me with immense pleasure when you share that you have enjoyed reading a post or that it touched you. I love that. That really makes me so glad and it makes me feel pretty honoured, too. It is also, more often that not, comforting to hear that I am not the only one who is absolutely failing at life on a regular basis.

But of course not everyone likes this blog. And that’s perfectly ok – I am all for everyone having their own opinion. Furthermore, I am not under the illusion that this blog would appeal to everyone.

I have friends whom I respect and admire who have indicated that they do not like reading this blog. I let their unintentionally-hurtful, throwaway comments sting. Comments like, “I have another friend who has a blog. He’s a fantastic writer”. (I get what you’re implying. Cheers!) Look, I know they don’t approve of my sometimes less than G-rated vocabulary, content and cynicism. But that’s ok. I am not, after all, forcing them to read or specifically aiming to appeal to them.

But that isn’t going to stop me from writing.

I am not, after all, writing for any accolades or record-breaking number of website hits. I am not writing because I have to. I am not writing thinking that I am changing the world. I am not writing to please everyone. I am not writing to cast judgement on others (and if I do – please pull me up on it). I am not writing to perpetuate the life that I portray on Instagram.

I am writing because I find it therapeutic. I am writing because it allows me to unravel my thoughts and to learn from my experiences. I am writing because I love it.

And for the moment that is enough.

Alex x

* A name so desperately lacking in punctuation that it hurts my eyes. (Would it be so hard to add a comma and question mark?)